


kinehora

by Writing_Doodle



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Canon-Typical Behavior, Canon-Typical Horror, Canon-Typical Meanness Towards Jon :(, Elias Being Elias, Gen, Jewish Character, Post-Episode 92, Tim is Jewish fight me, minor angst and not much comfort, no beta we die like men, tim is like... absolute king shit
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-20
Updated: 2020-04-20
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:40:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23743966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Writing_Doodle/pseuds/Writing_Doodle
Summary: "It was a beautiful thing really, if a bit dusty. Intricate strands weaving together into the shape of an open hand with an eye in its palm. Adding more eye imagery to the archive probably wasn’t a good move, but he figured things couldn’t get more fucked than they already were. Plus, he couldn’t say no to a good dose of irony."In which Tim brings a hamsa into the archives.
Comments: 18
Kudos: 52





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: I'm American and you really just gotta deal with that. I've already spent too much time writing for a British podcast, do you really think I'm going to do extra homework on British-English? I have to laugh. 
> 
> This started as a funny idea, but then it became sad after talking about it with a friend. :) Enjoy.

It started out as a joke, really. 

Tim’s smile was as close as it could be to the one he used to have all those months ago as he hung the hamsa on the wall. It was a beautiful thing really, if a bit dusty. Intricate strands weaving together into the shape of an open hand with an eye in its palm. Adding more eye imagery to the archive probably wasn’t a good move, but he figured things couldn’t get more fucked than they already were. Plus, he couldn’t say no to a good dose of irony. 

“What’s that?” Melanie sat with her boots on her desk, staining delicate paperwork with mud. It made Tim grin even wider. 

“This, my friend, is a hamsa. It’s a charm - wards of the evil eye,” he emphasized the last two words by wiggling his fingers in the standard  _ oooh spooky  _ gesture. “My mum gave it to me when I moved into my flat and, well, I figured it’s more fitting down here.” 

Melanie rose a single eyebrow. “You think it’ll, like... do anything?” 

Tim laughed, “G-d, no. I’m just hoping it’ll piss off Elias. He’s got eyes everywhere, right? Let this be a middle finger.” 

And Melanie finally tilted her head back and laughed, good and hard. “Petty,” she smiled, a sharpness to it that was right at home with Tim. “I love it.” 

* * *

The rest of the day passed without much incident so when Tim heard footsteps coming down the stairs he figured it was Martin or Melanie or, worse,  _ Jon _ . He didn’t bother looking up from the file he wasn’t actually reading until he heard a sharp knock and a cough that was distinctly none of the previous options. He sighed, “Of  _ course. _ ” 

Tim lifted his head and leveled a scowl at Elias, who wasn’t even looking at him. No, he was looking at the hamsa hanging on the wall.  _ Look  _ wasn’t the right word, though - it was too neutral. Elias was  _ glaring  _ at the hamsa in that bland business-like way he does everything. He stood there, just at the foot of the stairs and not a step further, hand curled tightly around the railing. 

“Hey, boss,” Tim greeted, leaning back in his chair with his hands resting behind his head. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?” 

Elias pursed his lips, finally ripping his creepy old man eyes away from the charm. “Hello, Timothy,” he nodded his head in a wonderfully fake display of professional amiability. “It’s been brought to my attention that you decided to redecorate the archives, as it were.” 

“I might’ve hung up a thing or two, yeah,” Tim shrugged, pointedly not glancing in the direction of the hamsa. “No one complained about the calendar, right? It wasn’t even a spicy one, this time.” 

Elias sighed, mild irritation in the lines around his mouth. “You know very well what I’m talking about, Timothy.” 

Tim looked at the hamsa and did an exaggerated double-take. “Surely you can’t mean  _ this _ , can you, boss? It’s just a fun little charm.” 

“Really, now. You’ve made your point quite vividly.” 

“Oh?” Tim rose his eyebrows. “And what point would that be?” 

“That you’re upset and you feel a need to lash out - it’s understandable, really. I would be more than happy to accommodate your need to cope with your… ah,  _ predicament _ , if it didn’t interfere with work.” 

Tim sat up, eyes sharp. “Why don’t you just say it, boss? It must be tiring dancing around the subject.” 

Elias’ jaw clenched, looking  _ properly  _ irritated for the first time. Tim couldn’t help but preen slightly at the victory. “I need you to take it down. It’s a  _ clear  _ violation of the rules against creating a hostile work environment.” 

And Tim laughed, sharp and disbelieving. “Oh, you’re going to play it like that aren’t you,  _ Elias? _ ” he spat out the name as if it was acid on his tongue. “Melanie didn’t have a problem with it, Martin hasn’t even noticed it’s there, yet, and  _ Jon…  _ Well, Jon hasn’t been around, has he?” he stood up and stalked closer to Elias, very aware of the fact that he wasn’t intimidating in the slightest, but too angry to care. “In fact, it seems like  _ you’re  _ the only one who has a problem with it.” 

Elias didn’t flinch or lose his bland smile, but something in his eyes flared. “Are you done?” he drawled. 

Tim forced himself to relax, knowing that yelling would do nothing but  _ maybe  _ amuse the man in front of him. He would’ve been taller than Elias if the man wasn’t in heels. He tries to imagine being taller, being something more than an ant under a magnifying glass. Tim relaxed his shoulders and took a deep breath. “No,” he answered, injecting all of the confidence he still had into his words. “It seems a bit antisemitic, does it?” he said, looking at Elias right in his cold steel eyes. “Asking me to take down an object no one else cares about. You don’t seem to mind Basira’s hijab or Rosie’s little cross necklace, so why the hamsa? You don’t want me to take this to HR, do you?” 

Elias stiffened, just a fraction. “This is ridiculous, Timothy. You know that the issue has nothing to do with…  _ antisemitism,”  _ his mouth twisted around the word, clearly uncomfortable even saying it out loud. 

_ What a nightmare this must be,  _ Tim smiled. “Do I?” he made a show of thinking deeply. “Well, what else can it be, then, boss? Can you think of any good reasons, when you  _ know  _ I’ve displayed worse in my old cubicle without an issue? Is this a fight you  _ really  _ want to have, because you know that I won’t go down without one.” 

The professionalism dropped from Elias’ face in an instant - he now looked at Tim with open contempt and… Tim really didn’t want that to be pride. “Well played, Mr. Stoker. I  _ do  _ have more important things to deal with than,” he waved his hand dismissively at the hamsa, “ _ this. _ ” The bland professionalism returned as if it never left in the first place. He gave Tim a cordial smile and inclined his head in farewell. “Enjoy your little tantrum.” 

And then he was back up those stairs. 

Tim didn’t realize he was shaking until he was back at his desk, all but collapsing into his chair. He put his head in his hands and didn’t know if he was laughing or crying. Either way, he was  _ relieved.  _ “I really did that, didn’t I?” the next sound he made was definitely a laugh, probably. “G-d…” 

He sat back, wiped his face, and calmed his breathing. “Okay,” he said. He spun his chair around and looked at the hamsa. The hamsa looked back, but it was comforting, somehow. Like it was letting Tim know he was safe. He glanced up at the ceiling and whispered a small  _ thanks  _ to something he wasn’t even sure was there. 

The rest of the day was spent not reading files. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me, typing: oh... pissed means drunk in british english doesn't it? whatever. [keeps typing]

Basira noticed the Hand as soon as she entered the archive and she couldn’t help but laugh a little at the audacity. Tim looked up from his laptop, startled and cautious. She hefted the books in her arms and nodded towards the charm. “Nice,” she commented with a vaguely amused smile. 

Tim followed her gaze and immediately relaxed, “Oh, yeah, that,” he shook the caution out of his head and flashed her a smile that was equal parts charming and obnoxious. “Pretty inspired, if I do say so myself.” 

She dropped the books onto an empty desk and began sorting through them by length and subject. “You the one that put it up there?” 

Tim stiffened, “Don’t sound so  _ surprised, _ ”

“Chill out,” Basira rolled her eyes, but she still felt a minor flash of guilt for making assumptions. “I just meant that you didn’t strike me as particularly religious.” 

“Well, how I spend my Saturdays doesn’t concern you,  _ Officer. _ ” 

“Fair,” she skimmed the first few pages of a book detailing the electromagnetic properties of ghost sightings. “Did it work?” 

“Did what work?”

“The Hand,” she glanced back up at Tim before flipping through more pages until she found something interesting. “Did it, you know, scare off  _ whatever _ it is that’s hanging around this place?” 

“What do you think?” the words were biting, but the look on Tim’s face was just a bit too sincere for Basira to ignore. 

“I think,” she paused, trying to remember how it felt when she crossed the threshold. How the heavy  _ watched  _ feeling that followed her throughout the institute dampened somewhat, replaced by something a little more gentle. “I think that when I stepped in here, I felt a bit safer.” 

Tim paused, mulling over the words before he sighed. “Yeah, alright,” he drummed his fingers against the wood of his desk, looking like he was about to reveal a dark secret. “I don’t trust you,” he prefaced.

“Just get on with it,”

“Fine. A few hours after I hung the thing up, Elias came down from his tower like a creepy little gargoyle. He was pissed and I mean  _ pissed.  _ Like, can-barely-hold-onto-his-veneer-of-mild-old-business-man  _ pissed.  _ He wanted me to take it down and I refused.”

“And he just let you refuse?”

“I may have threatened to get HR involved,” Tim’s smile was smug and Basira couldn’t really blame him. “That’s not important, though. I  _ think  _ that as long as the hamsa stays up, he can’t enter the archives. He just stayed by the stairs and didn’t even do anything particularly spooky,” Tim sighed, glancing at the ceramic eye. “I’m not going to say it wards off the Eye or whatever  _ completely  _ \- I’m not  _ that  _ much of an idiot - but it seems to do  _ something.  _ So, I’m gonna keep it up and hope it continues to do something.” 

Basira hummed, stepping a little closer to the charm to get a better look. It was slightly different from the amulet her grandmother used to clutch and swear by - lines twisting themselves into Hebrew rather than Arabic - but the shape was more than identifiable. Still a proper Hand of Fatima. The eye in its palm looked passively back at her and she felt… seen. It was a neutral feeling and after spending so much time associating being watched with malevolence, well… neutrality was more than welcome. 

“Maybe we should add more,” Basira mused. “As an experiment.” 

“See how many it takes before Elias finally fucks off?” 

“Sure,”

Tim was showing too many teeth, but there was a spark of joy hidden somewhere in that smile. “I like the way you think.”

* * *

“This isn’t like… appropriation, or whatever?” Melanie asked as she put on her new earrings. 

Tim shrugged. “I mean, maybe, but it doesn’t really matter since Basira’s the one who bought them and I’m the one who gave them to you. You don’t have to wear them if you’re afraid of someone giving you shit.” 

“ _ Afraid, _ ” Melanie huffed as if the mere suggestion was ridiculous. “I’m keeping them and if anyone gives me shit I’ll just tell them to fuck off.” 

“As expected,” 

  
Melanie opened her phone camera and looked at the small hands dangling from her earlobes. “I can’t  _ wait  _ to see the look on Elias’ face when he sees this.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> basira, tim, and melanie: [t-pose while Elias cowers in the corner]

**Author's Note:**

> Tim said supernatural problems require mundane solutions. Way to get caught in your own web of bureaucracy Elias, you absolute tool.


End file.
